For me, this story matters for very different reasons: for those girls and young women obviously, but also for the conspiracy-brain aspect of the MAGA phenomenon, their relation to reality, why conspiracies are so persuasive to some of them, all of that. I worry that a lot of people claim to be driven by them but couldn't name a single one of them, suddenly care about them more than the Diddy victims or any other child-rape scandal you can come up with. At a certain point it feels like taking advantage of them to throw mud at the president.
On the other hand, if you're more worried about the political or information-media side of things, at what point are you just stealing center stage from the people actually hurt? Their pain can't be turned into an "issue."
I don't have the answer. Probably best not to think about it *too* much. But I'm not blind to it either.
A small but significant correction to something Sarah mentioned early in the episode [@17:32]: Prince Andrew is the (younger) brother of the current King of England, not his nephew.
The gerrymanderer's motto? Every freeway deserves representation?
Forget about those wimpy floods in Central Texas. Carving out five new districts in TX designed to vote for Trump is now key. Trump says so. Do it NOW. So, Gov Abbott complied.
Done with this blog? Read also L Egan's recent podcast here (July 19);
CHECK CASAR'S "OVER-SNAKED" DISTRICT. Egan's guest is a TX Rep to Congress, Greg Casar. Wiki has a great article and public domain map of Casar's already "too snakey" Congressional District 35:
Casar says there's "a five alarm fire", with "a chance of spreading outside Texas". It's a fire few know about, YET.
BUNGLE-MANIA. A problem for Trump? Casar says the map-drawers are in the White House, not in TX. OOPS! Where? Bungle-mania central. The map drawers don't care that re-drawn maps will thus be ignorant, will make locating town halls and political offices a big mess inside TX..
MY COMMENT-- We saw how T. bribed Repub. Senator Murkowski of Alaska with special favors for her state. Her pro-T vote then broke the pending tie, in the House, on T's Budget Bill.
What can he promise to the bribeable inside TX? West Texas could counter him by telling Congress it's ready to be the 52nd state, please give, to it, its share of TX funds? Pres T. loves deals. It's a new deal for him to make?
OLD SONG OF W.TX.. Recall the song about "a young cowboy... as cold as the clay"? His body lay "in the streets of Laredo". Laredo is many miles closer to the rodeos of Tucson AZ than to the oil rigs of Houston TX. Who in TX funnels money to Abbott's party and then gets paid back with a larger amount? Rodeo guys, or owners of Houston oil riggers?
It will be interesting to see how the Murdoch clan deals with Trump's assault on the Wall Street Journal. They also have a major share of Fox news. It's conceivable that Fox news, not wanting to lose Trump supporters as viewers, will not come out and attack Trump but it more likely will start undermining him by supporting MAGA efforts to bring out the truth and express concerns about the apparently thousands of girls who were raped. Fox could easily also begin to focus on what the new budget bill will do to MAGA viewers.
I have a feeling that one reason this scandal seems to be sticking more than most is that Trump seems to have lost a step. He has often weathered scandals in the past partially by quickly coming up with something else for the press and his fans to focus on that led to both largely ignoring the scandal. The stuff he is throwing out now (grand jury testimony, team names) really isn't distracting many people. Now maybe some of that is because of the nature of this particular scandal, or that he is doesn't have much to bring up that he isn't already pushing, or just that the coalition he put together to win is so odd he can't distract enough of them with the same thing. But I am guessing a big part of it is that just can't read his fans as well as he used to, that he has lost that gut feeling for what pleases his supporters.
Rick Wingerter is on a roll in earlier posts. Agree totally. The con-artist-in-chief let us see " ...the ability of the rich and powerful to use their wealth and power to commit crimes and escape accountability." His lawyer Cohen went to jail, but not him, despite his 30-plus fraud charges, for trying to cover up his escapade with Stormy Daniels, while cheating on his third wife (while she was pregnant?)
If a criminal wants to stay out of jail, all he needs to do is run for President as a Republican?
This was not that long ago. In 2018, Daniels and one other woman went to court to be freed of the nondisclosure agreements regarding sex with Pres T. His attorney, Michael Cohen, went to jail in 2018, as follows, with Wiki's article on Cohen giving the timeline:
"he [Cohen] violated campaign-finance laws at Trump's direction 'for the principal purpose of influencing' the 2016 presidential election....
In November 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to U.S. congressional committees about efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.
In December 2018, Cohen was sentenced to three years in federal prison and ordered to pay a $50,000 fine....
In February 2019, the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, disbarred him from practicing law in the state....
In May 2019, he reported to the federal prison near Otisville, New York....
In November 2021, he [Cohen, NOT Trump] ]completed his sentence."
I get it. We need to care. Epstein was a monster and Trump was deeply involved with him. Who knows what Trump knew or participated in. Doesn't really matter. Epstein's victims deserve justice and Pam Bondi refuses to give it to them because Trump told her not to. The face that a 15 year old was recruited by Maxwell at Mar-A-Lago, to me, is enough of a smoking gun to bear investigation. (What was she doing there in the first place? Did Trump know she was sent over to Epstein's place? Did he ask about her? What did he know about her? Did he know her at all? If he didn't, then what in the hell was she doing at Mar-A-Lago? She wasn't old enough to work there.)
And for the MAGA right wing, outrage, truth-and-justice, eff-your-feelings crowd? They'll get in line. Trump's their meal ticket. They won't cross him. They'll all do a Charlie Kirk. "A government functionary told me there's nothing there. I believe him. Why wouldn't I believe him? I'm moving on. Dan Bongino said there was no there there and when a guy like Bongino says something like that, well, it's a waste of time to keep asking questions. So, we're done."
Which brings me to the Democrats and where I think it's all hopeless. Yes, they should go full-on Jasmine Crockett on Pam Bondi. They should make all of this a campaign issue. "Elect us and we will find out to whom Pam Bondi's allegiance is dedicated: the American People or Donald Trump." Hold hearings. Find out what happened.
But they won't. They'll want to talk about inflation or egg prices or gas prices or Ukraine or -- heaven forfend, but you know they will -- culture war 80/20 issues where they're the 20%. And then they'll lose and our screwedness will be continue.
Your enthusiasm is good, but we need to revise what's said, to this: Candidates and politicians need to talk about ALL of it, not just Trump's moral costs to us as a country, but also his economic costs and his defiling of democracy.
Why? Pres. T finds it so easy to refute one thing at a time by lying.
It's MUCH harder for him to focus his lies if missiles fly at him at from three directions.
REPUBLIC, SINCE VOTING EXPANSIONS, NOW ALSO A DEMOCRACY.
We were founded as a minimal republic (a limited too few with the right to vote, very early, some thought it OK for only those with a thousand acres of land to vote).
Over the centuries, step by step, we the republic flowered into fuller and fuller democracy, as more and more were allowed to vote, black males paving the way for all women to vote, as an example, with a late round lowering the voting age from 21 1o 18. (Allowed 1972, as they had been the ones sent to Viet Nam, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-sixth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution).
Agree - the Democrats need to do what Trump does - flood the zone. Trump has a very limited ability to stay focused on any one thing for very long and his minions take all their direction from him. Their strategy is to divert from what the issue of the day seems to be for them but if they're having to deal with a lot of issues they won't be able to focus.
"Thou dost protest," NOT "Thou doth protest". In archaic English grammar, the -st verb ending is second-person singular, so it goes with thou. (The -th ending is third-person singular, so it goes with he/she/it.)
I struggle to understand why he is so concerned. He can't run again, and with his vein disorder, he is probably dying in the next year or two; that condition is severe. So he's gonna shuffle off soon, and he's got all the power he is ever going to have, so like... why would he care?
Also, I will genuinely laugh if Trump passes away and Biden is still alive for the whole term.
Sorry, lots of people walk around with CVI and heart failure. It's treatable within limits. Sadly, he will have time to eat plenty more cheeseburgers, while ruining our nation.
And don't downplay the Stormy Daniels situation. That's important because Trump used the fraud to keep this out of the public eye until after he was elected. It is a fraud on the voters.
The sex part of it is salacious. But that isn't why is matters. It matters because it allowed Criminal Trump to cheat his way into office.
It just seems like Donald Trump must have known that Epstein was running a criminal sex trafficking ring that trafficked underage girls. Given their close palship over so many years, how would it be possible for him to not know? So, one of the things Criminal Trump owes us is an explanation of how Epstein was able to conduct his crimes for years under Donald's nose.
Somebody give Bill a raise so he can afford a decent internet connection and a camera that goes higher than 480p. the sound breaks in particular are very off putting.
Who has the card that the WSJ alleges Trump gave Epstein for his birthday?
If this is a real part of the Epstein evidence, the DOJ should have it.
If they have it, then the WSJ could use a FOIA request on it. Or, they could demand it be produced during discovery if there's a real defamation case. And if the DOJ has it, then AG Bondi should have control over it. What does that mean for her?
But suppose the DOJ doesn't have it. What does that mean? That it's a forgery? That someone else has it? WHAT DOES THAT MEAN, IF SOMEONE ELSE HAS IT?
If it's a real thing, I hope the DOJ has it, and that it will be produced during discovery.
In any case, I agree with everyone. There's no chance the WSJ put this story out without vetting the evidence about it. They either were able to have experts authenticate if for them or they have credible evidence the DOJ has it.
Even so, the important thing about this story isn't Trump, it isn't Epstein, it isn't conspiracy theories, it isn't what it does to Trump's popularity. The important thing is about what it says about the ability of the rich and powerful to use their wealth and power to commit crimes and escape accountability. There's plenty of evidence on that front. The center of the action committed horrible crimes for years in the presence and with the knowledge of the rich and powerful. I think that's been established.
We should remember that the reason Criminal Trump committed 34 counts of fraud, the counts he was convicted of in New York, was because he wanted to make sure that his encounter with Stormy Daniels (Stephanie Clifford) didn't become public. He knew that if it came out, the Hollywood Access tape would be played over and over in the final weeks of the 2016 campaign. That would have probably doomed his campaign. The Hollywood Access scandal had already been wiped off the front pages with false claims about Hillary Clinton. But if the Stormy story had surfaced, the tapes would have come back out.
He also lied to his supporters and bilked them out of hundreds of millions of dollars by claiming he'd won the 2020 presidential election. This was (IMO) a colossal instance of fraud, and it's what funded his come-back campaign. Plus, it lead to the insurrection.
He's cheated his way into the Oval Office twice.
Even if you give him a complete pass on all the Epstein stuff (which would take willful ignorance, wouldn't it?) he should have long ago been swept into the dustbin of history.
Dem's, this is your ready-made weapon and scandal. Perhaps the greatest vehicle forward for any party since Watergate- IF used correctly. If you fail to grab hold and ride it to victory, in 2026 and 2028, shame on you. And inexcusable. Dem's, FGS, take your advantage here and use it. Please recognize: your fight is for our country.
Is there anyone in the WH, cabinet or other positions close to Trump who is known to be associated with him during his Epstein days? It strikes me that there may be roles that have contact with school girls of various ages, and for the sake of appearances at the very least, they should be considered a safety risk while so much is unknown.
I do enjoy both of your passion for this!
For me, this story matters for very different reasons: for those girls and young women obviously, but also for the conspiracy-brain aspect of the MAGA phenomenon, their relation to reality, why conspiracies are so persuasive to some of them, all of that. I worry that a lot of people claim to be driven by them but couldn't name a single one of them, suddenly care about them more than the Diddy victims or any other child-rape scandal you can come up with. At a certain point it feels like taking advantage of them to throw mud at the president.
On the other hand, if you're more worried about the political or information-media side of things, at what point are you just stealing center stage from the people actually hurt? Their pain can't be turned into an "issue."
I don't have the answer. Probably best not to think about it *too* much. But I'm not blind to it either.
A small but significant correction to something Sarah mentioned early in the episode [@17:32]: Prince Andrew is the (younger) brother of the current King of England, not his nephew.
The gerrymanderer's motto? Every freeway deserves representation?
Forget about those wimpy floods in Central Texas. Carving out five new districts in TX designed to vote for Trump is now key. Trump says so. Do it NOW. So, Gov Abbott complied.
Done with this blog? Read also L Egan's recent podcast here (July 19);
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/rep-cesar-texas-gerrymandering-could
CHECK CASAR'S "OVER-SNAKED" DISTRICT. Egan's guest is a TX Rep to Congress, Greg Casar. Wiki has a great article and public domain map of Casar's already "too snakey" Congressional District 35:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas%27s_35th_congressional_district
Casar says there's "a five alarm fire", with "a chance of spreading outside Texas". It's a fire few know about, YET.
BUNGLE-MANIA. A problem for Trump? Casar says the map-drawers are in the White House, not in TX. OOPS! Where? Bungle-mania central. The map drawers don't care that re-drawn maps will thus be ignorant, will make locating town halls and political offices a big mess inside TX..
MY COMMENT-- We saw how T. bribed Repub. Senator Murkowski of Alaska with special favors for her state. Her pro-T vote then broke the pending tie, in the House, on T's Budget Bill.
What can he promise to the bribeable inside TX? West Texas could counter him by telling Congress it's ready to be the 52nd state, please give, to it, its share of TX funds? Pres T. loves deals. It's a new deal for him to make?
OLD SONG OF W.TX.. Recall the song about "a young cowboy... as cold as the clay"? His body lay "in the streets of Laredo". Laredo is many miles closer to the rodeos of Tucson AZ than to the oil rigs of Houston TX. Who in TX funnels money to Abbott's party and then gets paid back with a larger amount? Rodeo guys, or owners of Houston oil riggers?
It will be interesting to see how the Murdoch clan deals with Trump's assault on the Wall Street Journal. They also have a major share of Fox news. It's conceivable that Fox news, not wanting to lose Trump supporters as viewers, will not come out and attack Trump but it more likely will start undermining him by supporting MAGA efforts to bring out the truth and express concerns about the apparently thousands of girls who were raped. Fox could easily also begin to focus on what the new budget bill will do to MAGA viewers.
I have a feeling that one reason this scandal seems to be sticking more than most is that Trump seems to have lost a step. He has often weathered scandals in the past partially by quickly coming up with something else for the press and his fans to focus on that led to both largely ignoring the scandal. The stuff he is throwing out now (grand jury testimony, team names) really isn't distracting many people. Now maybe some of that is because of the nature of this particular scandal, or that he is doesn't have much to bring up that he isn't already pushing, or just that the coalition he put together to win is so odd he can't distract enough of them with the same thing. But I am guessing a big part of it is that just can't read his fans as well as he used to, that he has lost that gut feeling for what pleases his supporters.
Rick Wingerter is on a roll in earlier posts. Agree totally. The con-artist-in-chief let us see " ...the ability of the rich and powerful to use their wealth and power to commit crimes and escape accountability." His lawyer Cohen went to jail, but not him, despite his 30-plus fraud charges, for trying to cover up his escapade with Stormy Daniels, while cheating on his third wife (while she was pregnant?)
If a criminal wants to stay out of jail, all he needs to do is run for President as a Republican?
This was not that long ago. In 2018, Daniels and one other woman went to court to be freed of the nondisclosure agreements regarding sex with Pres T. His attorney, Michael Cohen, went to jail in 2018, as follows, with Wiki's article on Cohen giving the timeline:
"he [Cohen] violated campaign-finance laws at Trump's direction 'for the principal purpose of influencing' the 2016 presidential election....
In November 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to U.S. congressional committees about efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.
In December 2018, Cohen was sentenced to three years in federal prison and ordered to pay a $50,000 fine....
In February 2019, the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, disbarred him from practicing law in the state....
In May 2019, he reported to the federal prison near Otisville, New York....
In November 2021, he [Cohen, NOT Trump] ]completed his sentence."
I get it. We need to care. Epstein was a monster and Trump was deeply involved with him. Who knows what Trump knew or participated in. Doesn't really matter. Epstein's victims deserve justice and Pam Bondi refuses to give it to them because Trump told her not to. The face that a 15 year old was recruited by Maxwell at Mar-A-Lago, to me, is enough of a smoking gun to bear investigation. (What was she doing there in the first place? Did Trump know she was sent over to Epstein's place? Did he ask about her? What did he know about her? Did he know her at all? If he didn't, then what in the hell was she doing at Mar-A-Lago? She wasn't old enough to work there.)
And for the MAGA right wing, outrage, truth-and-justice, eff-your-feelings crowd? They'll get in line. Trump's their meal ticket. They won't cross him. They'll all do a Charlie Kirk. "A government functionary told me there's nothing there. I believe him. Why wouldn't I believe him? I'm moving on. Dan Bongino said there was no there there and when a guy like Bongino says something like that, well, it's a waste of time to keep asking questions. So, we're done."
Which brings me to the Democrats and where I think it's all hopeless. Yes, they should go full-on Jasmine Crockett on Pam Bondi. They should make all of this a campaign issue. "Elect us and we will find out to whom Pam Bondi's allegiance is dedicated: the American People or Donald Trump." Hold hearings. Find out what happened.
But they won't. They'll want to talk about inflation or egg prices or gas prices or Ukraine or -- heaven forfend, but you know they will -- culture war 80/20 issues where they're the 20%. And then they'll lose and our screwedness will be continue.
Your enthusiasm is good, but we need to revise what's said, to this: Candidates and politicians need to talk about ALL of it, not just Trump's moral costs to us as a country, but also his economic costs and his defiling of democracy.
Why? Pres. T finds it so easy to refute one thing at a time by lying.
It's MUCH harder for him to focus his lies if missiles fly at him at from three directions.
REPUBLIC, SINCE VOTING EXPANSIONS, NOW ALSO A DEMOCRACY.
We were founded as a minimal republic (a limited too few with the right to vote, very early, some thought it OK for only those with a thousand acres of land to vote).
Over the centuries, step by step, we the republic flowered into fuller and fuller democracy, as more and more were allowed to vote, black males paving the way for all women to vote, as an example, with a late round lowering the voting age from 21 1o 18. (Allowed 1972, as they had been the ones sent to Viet Nam, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-sixth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution).
Agree - the Democrats need to do what Trump does - flood the zone. Trump has a very limited ability to stay focused on any one thing for very long and his minions take all their direction from him. Their strategy is to divert from what the issue of the day seems to be for them but if they're having to deal with a lot of issues they won't be able to focus.
Richard, liked the posts you flagged in July, (Thanks!)
Found them here (those posting in June June maybe less consistently good as TrumpStein had not yet happened?): https://substack.com/@ralany
"Thou dost protest," NOT "Thou doth protest". In archaic English grammar, the -st verb ending is second-person singular, so it goes with thou. (The -th ending is third-person singular, so it goes with he/she/it.)
I struggle to understand why he is so concerned. He can't run again, and with his vein disorder, he is probably dying in the next year or two; that condition is severe. So he's gonna shuffle off soon, and he's got all the power he is ever going to have, so like... why would he care?
Also, I will genuinely laugh if Trump passes away and Biden is still alive for the whole term.
Sorry, lots of people walk around with CVI and heart failure. It's treatable within limits. Sadly, he will have time to eat plenty more cheeseburgers, while ruining our nation.
And don't downplay the Stormy Daniels situation. That's important because Trump used the fraud to keep this out of the public eye until after he was elected. It is a fraud on the voters.
The sex part of it is salacious. But that isn't why is matters. It matters because it allowed Criminal Trump to cheat his way into office.
It just seems like Donald Trump must have known that Epstein was running a criminal sex trafficking ring that trafficked underage girls. Given their close palship over so many years, how would it be possible for him to not know? So, one of the things Criminal Trump owes us is an explanation of how Epstein was able to conduct his crimes for years under Donald's nose.
Somebody give Bill a raise so he can afford a decent internet connection and a camera that goes higher than 480p. the sound breaks in particular are very off putting.
Agree!! Jim Swift should be able to help him get it figured out.
Who has the card that the WSJ alleges Trump gave Epstein for his birthday?
If this is a real part of the Epstein evidence, the DOJ should have it.
If they have it, then the WSJ could use a FOIA request on it. Or, they could demand it be produced during discovery if there's a real defamation case. And if the DOJ has it, then AG Bondi should have control over it. What does that mean for her?
But suppose the DOJ doesn't have it. What does that mean? That it's a forgery? That someone else has it? WHAT DOES THAT MEAN, IF SOMEONE ELSE HAS IT?
If it's a real thing, I hope the DOJ has it, and that it will be produced during discovery.
In any case, I agree with everyone. There's no chance the WSJ put this story out without vetting the evidence about it. They either were able to have experts authenticate if for them or they have credible evidence the DOJ has it.
Even so, the important thing about this story isn't Trump, it isn't Epstein, it isn't conspiracy theories, it isn't what it does to Trump's popularity. The important thing is about what it says about the ability of the rich and powerful to use their wealth and power to commit crimes and escape accountability. There's plenty of evidence on that front. The center of the action committed horrible crimes for years in the presence and with the knowledge of the rich and powerful. I think that's been established.
What do we plan to do about that?
My understanding is that it was part of the evidence, so Bondi has probably tossed it in the Potomac by now.
We should remember that the reason Criminal Trump committed 34 counts of fraud, the counts he was convicted of in New York, was because he wanted to make sure that his encounter with Stormy Daniels (Stephanie Clifford) didn't become public. He knew that if it came out, the Hollywood Access tape would be played over and over in the final weeks of the 2016 campaign. That would have probably doomed his campaign. The Hollywood Access scandal had already been wiped off the front pages with false claims about Hillary Clinton. But if the Stormy story had surfaced, the tapes would have come back out.
He also lied to his supporters and bilked them out of hundreds of millions of dollars by claiming he'd won the 2020 presidential election. This was (IMO) a colossal instance of fraud, and it's what funded his come-back campaign. Plus, it lead to the insurrection.
He's cheated his way into the Oval Office twice.
Even if you give him a complete pass on all the Epstein stuff (which would take willful ignorance, wouldn't it?) he should have long ago been swept into the dustbin of history.
Dem's, this is your ready-made weapon and scandal. Perhaps the greatest vehicle forward for any party since Watergate- IF used correctly. If you fail to grab hold and ride it to victory, in 2026 and 2028, shame on you. And inexcusable. Dem's, FGS, take your advantage here and use it. Please recognize: your fight is for our country.
Yes, "going high" certainly hasn't paid off!
Is there anyone in the WH, cabinet or other positions close to Trump who is known to be associated with him during his Epstein days? It strikes me that there may be roles that have contact with school girls of various ages, and for the sake of appearances at the very least, they should be considered a safety risk while so much is unknown.